Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller) (23 page)

“You wouldn’t answer my calls, so I had to track you down. I looked at your credit card charges online to find out you were staying at the Residence Inn at Twenty-Ninth and Main.”

“You did what?”

“Don’t be so surprised. Did you think I was just going to sit back and do nothing? And in case you forgot, I know where you keep your list of passwords. I wanted to know where you were staying so I wouldn’t worry as much. I hear that Residence Inn is nice. It’s across the street from Penn Valley Park. I know you love to run there, but please don’t go at night. It’s not safe.”

Alex blinked, her mouth half-open, dumbfounded. “It’s okay.”

“I drove by a couple of times but I was afraid to knock. I didn’t want you to think I was stalking you.”

“You mean you didn’t want me to know that you were stalking me.”

Bonnie took a breath, smiling. “Yeah. That. And I thought you needed time and space, but that was Saturday and this is Monday and I talked to Grace and she said she didn’t know where you were, but I know how much you like to eat here so I took a chance and I’ve been sitting at a table in the front window since eleven this morning and—”

Alex stopped her. “I’m not coming back.”

Bonnie sniffed. “I know. Not now anyway. Maybe never. But you can’t just walk out like that without . . . without me telling you something.”

“I know you love me. I love you too, but that’s not what this is about.”

“I do know that, but you’ve got some crazy idea what loving someone means, so just be quiet and listen for a minute.”

Alex nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m glad you told me everything. I know you think you did some terrible things and I’m not saying you’re wrong about that, even if I’d like to think I’d have shot Dwayne Reed if it had been me instead of you. And the whole thing with the judge and your clients, well, I won’t lie. That’s . . .” She shook her head. “That’s a real mess. And shutting me out, that’s a huge problem in the trust department even if I get why you did it.” She made a quarter turn, facing Alex. “You carried all this crap by yourself for the last year and you can see how well that worked out, but you can’t fix it now by running away from me, from us. I don’t know anything about the law or what you have to do to set things right or even if you can. I don’t know if you’ll lose your job, your law license, or go to jail, and I don’t care. All I know is that I love you and I’ll be by your side every step of the way if you’ll let me. And if you don’t come home, I’ll find you no matter where you go.”

She leaned over, kissed Alex on the cheek, got out of the car, and walked away, not looking back.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

INTERROGATING A SUSPECT WAS LIKE putting on a play where everyone but the suspect knew their lines. The other actors had to be rehearsed and ready and the stage had to be set to keep the suspect unbalanced, desperate to catch the right cue.

Rossi liked flashing his badge in front of the suspect’s family, coworkers, or nosy neighbors and asking if there was someplace private they could talk. Catching suspects cold, he’d watch them stammer and stutter, littering their stories with tissue-thin lies that would trap them later.

Knocking on a suspect’s door and telling him they were going downtown for questioning could be just as effective. Whether the suspect spent the ride asking his own questions or stewing in silence, the uncertainty softened him up. And if it didn’t, the perp walk from the car to the interrogation room with cops holding each arm and dozens of heads tracking every step made all but the most hardened thug afraid they would mess themselves. And having met him at Robin’s house, Rossi knew there was nothing hardened about Ted Norris.

Rossi wanted to know as much as he could about Norris before he asked the first question. He wanted to know his work history, his criminal history, and his financial status. He wanted to have copies of the restraining order from the divorce and the one Sonia Steele had obtained, for the moment when Norris denied ever threatening her. He wanted surveillance video from the parking lot where Norris rear-ended Robin’s car, for when he claimed that never happened.

More than anything else, he wanted Norris’s car. He pulled Norris’s license and vehicle registration records. The car was a black six-year-old Camry, not the white Ford Escort Norris had been driving when Rossi escorted him out of Robin’s house a few days ago.

Putting all of that together took time, so Mitch Fowler grudgingly assigned a couple of detectives to sit on Norris and make sure he didn’t run, warning Rossi that Norris better be their guy or the overtime was coming out of Rossi’s paycheck, an empty threat Rossi ignored. By Tuesday morning, less than twenty-four hours after he met with Sonia Steele, Rossi had everything he wanted except for Norris’s car.

The surveillance video from the parking lot confirmed that Norris had been driving the Camry when that accident happened. The detectives babysitting Norris reported seeing only the Escort, so Rossi had dispatch issue a be-on-the-lookout for the Camry. When the BOLO didn’t turn up anything overnight, Fowler ordered Rossi to bring Norris in for questioning.

The detectives watching Norris banged on his door Tuesday morning at seven o’clock. They hammered loud and long enough to rouse the neighbors on either side before Norris opened up. They let him throw on some clothes and brought him in, bleary-eyed and hungover, depositing him in an interrogation room. Rossi watched him through the two-way mirror. Unshaven and disheveled, Norris gazed around the room, drummed his fingers on the table, and then laid his head down using his folded arms as a pillow. Rossi poured a cup of coffee and joined him.

“Good morning, Mr. Norris.”

Norris raised his head, squinting at Rossi. “You’re the cop from the other night?”

“Detective Rossi. Thought you could use this. It’s not exactly hair of the dog, but it’s the next best thing.”

Rossi put the cup of coffee on the table in front of Norris, who raised it to his mouth, inhaling the aroma before taking a sip.

“What am I doing here? The other guys, all they’d tell me is that it was something to do with Robin.”

“That’s right. We’re making progress in our investigation, but we need your help to clear up a few things.”

Charlie Wheeler knocked on the door and stepped inside, right on schedule.

“Mr. Norris, I’m Detective Wheeler. I did the reconstruction on your ex-wife’s accident. Sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Detective Rossi for a minute. Won’t take long. Do you mind waiting?”

Norris took another sip of coffee. “No. Take your time. You got a newspaper or something?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Wheeler said.

Mitch Fowler met Rossi and Wheeler out in the hall.

“How long are you going to let him sit like that?” Fowler asked.

“Couple of hours at least,” Rossi said. “I’d like to find his car before I go at him.”

“Still nothing on the BOLO,” Wheeler said. “Airport police are still checking all the lots in case he stashed it out there, but there are thousands of cars for them to look at.”

“Why would he leave the car at the airport?” Fowler asked. “Why not take it to a body shop and get rid of the evidence?”

“Because he knows we’ll check the body shops and they all take before-and-after photographs for insurance purposes,” Wheeler said. “He could take it to a chop shop that handles stolen cars if he knew where to find one or he could sell it to a salvage yard for scrap, but they’d probably just take his money and sell it to someone else since it’s worth more as a used car than a hunk of steel. So hiding it in an airport parking lot until he can figure out how to get rid of it isn’t a half-bad idea.”

“Checking all those parking lots could take a couple of days,” Fowler said. “And if he didn’t leave it there, he could have parked in any number of garages or lots on either side of the state line. Are you going to search all of them?”

“If we have to,” Rossi said. “But I like the airport because once he ditched the car he could take a shuttle to the terminal and a different one back into town.”

“What about the Escort?” Fowler asked.

“I ran the tag. He rented it from Enterprise. They delivered it to his apartment the morning after Robin was killed.”

“And if he left the Camry at the airport,” Wheeler said, “there may be video of him driving into the lot and getting out of the car.”

Fowler thought for a moment. “Okay. I’ll send some uniforms to the airport to help out. You can let him sit for two hours, but then you go at him, car or no car. If you don’t have enough to hold him, cut him loose. I don’t want any more goddamn harassment lawsuits.”

Two hours later, Rossi and Wheeler went back to the interrogation room. Norris was standing in front of the two-way mirror, cupping his hands around his eyes, staring at the glass. He turned around when the door opened.

“You guys get off watching me sitting in here, scratching my nuts waiting for somebody to tell me what the hell I’m doing here?”

“Sit down, Mr. Norris,” Rossi said.

“I’m not doing shit until you tell me what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is that you are going to sit down and answer our questions.”

“Maybe I should call my lawyer first.”

“That’s your right at any time, but it would sure make me wonder why you’d think you need a lawyer before you even know what we want to talk to you about. Wouldn’t that make you wonder, Detective Wheeler?”

“Sure would, unless Mr. Norris is hiding something.”

Norris raised both hands above his waist, palms out. “Hey, I’m not hiding anything. You guys wake me up at the crack of dawn and drag me down here, leave me sitting here for half the morning . . . anybody would want to know what it’s all about. Doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything, ’cause I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Good,” Rossi said. “So there’s no reason you can’t sit down and answer our questions.”

Norris shrugged and took a seat. “Fire away.”

Chapter Forty

“WHERE’S YOUR CAMRY?” Rossi asked.

Norris flinched, his eyebrows bouncing. “My Camry?”

“Yeah. The one you were driving when you rear-ended Robin a couple of weeks ago.”

Norris leaned back in his chair, arms folded over his chest. “That’s what this is about? Hey, I can explain. That was an accident. My fault, that’s for sure, but it was an accident. I was looking at my phone and the next thing I know, boom, she stopped in front of me and I ran into her.”

“Answer my question. Where’s your Camry?”

“Did my oldest, Donny, put you up to this? His mother is dead and he’s jerking me around to pay for the damage to her car from that parking lot fender bender even after her car was totaled in the accident when she was killed? Unbelievable! I told him I didn’t have insurance.”

“Donny has nothing to do with this, Mr. Norris. I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you don’t answer me, Detective Wheeler and I will be back to wondering why you’re refusing to cooperate with us. Where’s your Camry?”

“Refusing to cooperate? Are you kidding? I’m here, aren’t I? I didn’t call a lawyer, did I?”

“But you’re trying awfully hard not to answer what should be a very simple question, which doesn’t put you in a good light.”

Norris slid down in his chair, scratched his nose, thumped his fingers on the table again, and sat up. “Okay, okay. Somebody stole my car.”

“When?”

Norris tugged at his chin, thinking. “Last week. Must have been Wednesday night. I came out of my apartment Thursday morning and it was gone.”

“Did you file a police report?”

Norris shook his head. “No. No police report.”

“Why not?”

Norris turned away, staring at the two-way mirror, squirming in his chair. He took a deep breath. “Look, if I tell you, you gotta help me out.”

Rossi leaned forward, hoping Norris was about to confess in record-breaking time.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help you, but you have to help yourself by telling me what happened to the car and why you need my help.”

Norris’s eyes darted back and forth from Rossi to Wheeler and back again until he slapped one hand on the table. “Shit! I knew it was a mistake to get involved with that guy. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I’m such a fucking moron!”

“What guy?”

“Richie Vigliaturo.”

Rossi sat back. “Richie the Vig? The loan shark?”

Norris scrunched his eyes and rubbed the sides of his face with both hands. “Yeah. I was broke and a friend of a friend hooked me up with Richie. He loaned me a few bucks and I gave him the title to my car as security. He said if I got behind, he’d take my car before he broke my legs.”

“And you got behind.”

“Yeah. I owed him every Monday, but I missed last Monday, so he took my car. That’s why you gotta help me out. I missed this Monday too, and I don’t want my legs broken.”

“Wait here,” Rossi said, signaling to Wheeler. “We’ll be back.”

“Hey, you think you can help me?”

“I think that if Richie repossessed your car, you’re the luckiest guy in the world.”

Rossi and Wheeler retreated to the break room, each pouring a cup of coffee.

“What do you think?” Wheeler asked.

“I think if Richie boosted the car before Robin was killed, he won’t mind telling us, and if he took it after she was killed, he’ll give it up in a heartbeat to prove he had nothing to do with her death. He’s not interested in that kind of trouble.”

“Yeah, but if he took the car last week, what are the odds he still has it this week?”

“Next to zero. I’ll give him a call.”

“What, you got him on speed dial?”

Rossi grinned. “Let’s just say he’ll take my call and leave it at that.”

“Hang on. Let’s say Richie didn’t take the car and we find it out at the airport or wherever and we can prove that it’s the car that knocked Robin off the road.”

“Then we charge Norris with first-degree murder.”

“I know, but—”

“But what?” Rossi asked.

“How did they end up out on that stretch of road? I know that Norris lives off of Barry Road, but that raises more questions than answers. Was Robin at his apartment? What was she doing there? According to the kids, their folks went out of their way to avoid each other. And if she was there, what happened? Did they have a fight and she ran out and he chased her out to the boonies? Or did Norris just happen to see her driving around his neighborhood and decide to run her off the road?” Wheeler scratched his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to me.”